by Kevin Morris

Created on: May 13, 2007

Oliver Stoned

One morning in AP Biology near the end of my senior year in high school, I overheard a friend describing his weekend activities. "The movie was ridiculousI thought it was going to be all action, but it was freaking boring!" I heard him say. Even though I already knew what recently-released Oliver Stone movie he was referring to, I decided to make sure. "So you saw Alexander?" I asked. "You mean Alexander the Sweet? Yeah, I saw it" was his reply.

Although my memory of that conversation has begun to fade (he actually might have said "Alexander the Fabulous"; I can't recall), my fascination with the films of Oliver Stone has not.

The first Oliver Stone movie I remember seeing was Nixon. I was in fourth grade and my mother rented it from Blockbuster. I had just done a report on President Nixon, but the sight of two VHS cassettes back-to-back is enough to make any youngster think his evening is screwed: "No Sega Genesis today Kevin, were watching Dances with Wolves!"

In any case, I remember very little of that first viewing, accept being taken by the atmospheric cut from the Nixon-Kennedy debate to JFK's inauguration ceremony. Nixon has since become one of my favorite films.

My next viewing was of Platoon. I was in ninth grade at the time and my proto-fascist best friend (who went on to join the National Guard, unsurprisingly) insisted we watch it. Never a fan of jungle combat films (you can say some are about the Pacific Theatre in World War II and others about the Indochina Conflict, but all I see are endlessly dark scenes of rain-soaked actor-soldiers walking around the Philippines and reflecting on the futility of war Is it The Thin Red Line or We Were Soldiers? No one knows (or cares)), I was nonetheless taken with Stone's film, particularly with the final shots of the fighter-jet approaching like the Hand of Fate.

Next up was Wall Street, at my CFA brother's insistence. Expecting a rehash of 80's clichs or an aged version of Boiler Room (a favorite film of mine), I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of Stone's morality tale.

After going three for three with America's favorite Vietnam/rehab vet, I decided to go the rest of the way. I watched JFK, Scarface, Any Given Sunday, and Born on the Fourth of July. By 2006, I had re-watched Nixon, and seen Alexander in theatres. I still have yet to see Salvador, Natural Born Killers, and The Doors, but after re-watching the aforementioned films several times, I feel I have developed a reasonable handle

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